# I promised you an Easter Bunny: Berryman on the Kennedy spending program, 1961

I promised you an Easter Bunny is a Jim Berryman cartoon for the Washington Evening Star dated 31 March 1961. A cigar-smoking magician pulls a dollar-eyed rabbit labeled "Kennedy Spending Program" out of a hat labeled "Congress," and a startled man in a "Taxpayer" sash loses his own hat.

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      I promised you an Easter Bunny

      I promised you an Easter Bunny: Berryman on the Kennedy spending program, 1961
      Jim Berryman's March 1961 Washington Star cartoon pulls a "Kennedy Spending Program" rabbit from a Congress hat while the Taxpayer loses his.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Card stacking
      DateMarch 31, 1961Made byWashington Evening Star (cartoonist Jim Berryman)MediumCartoonCountryUnited StatesRegimeKennedy AdministrationNARANAID 5743289SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives (NARA), Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons , retrieved October 3, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) Jim Berryman, Washington Evening Star. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Senate, 5743289 (NAID 5743289).
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  I promised you an Easter Bunny is a Jim Berryman cartoon for the Washington Evening Star dated 31 March 1961. A cigar-smoking magician pulls a dollar-eyed rabbit labeled "Kennedy Spending Program" out of a hat labeled "Congress," and a startled man in a "Taxpayer" sash loses his own hat.

## The drawing

A magician in a tailcoat, cigar in his mouth, holds a rabbit up by the ears. The rabbit has dollar signs for eyes. The top hat it came out of is labeled with the branch of government that votes the money. Beside the act stands a man wearing a sash, caught by surprise and losing his hat. The catalog title supplies the caption, "I promised you an Easter Bunny."

KENNEDY SPENDING PROGRAM

CONGRESS

TAXPAYER

JIM BERRYMAN WASHINGTON STAR......

Words on the cartoon, FRAME transcription, read from the image and not independently checked. Washington Evening Star, 31 March 1961. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 5743289.

## How the joke works

The argument is in the labels. The program carries the President's name, the hat is Congress, and the only person in the picture who is not performing is the taxpayer. A gift that is pulled out of a hat looks free, and the cartoon's point is that it is not: someone in the audience is paying for the trick.

FRAME tags it card stacking and calls the tag approximate. The cartoon shows only the cost side of the spending proposals. It names no program, no amount and no benefit, so a reader learns nothing about what the money was for. That is normal for an editorial cartoon, which compresses a view rather than weighing a bill.

The view rests on a constitutional fact. The power of the purse belongs to Congress, and every dollar it appropriates is paid for by someone. Berryman labels the hat Congress, which puts the source of the money where the Constitution puts it. A cartoonist at a private newspaper put the President's name on the rabbit.

Other Berryman cartoons on this site from the Kennedy years are L'etat, C'est Moi, Let Me Through! and I Just Didn't Realize I Was So Bad Off.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, I promised you an Easter Bunny, 31 March 1961. Jim Berryman, Washington Evening Star.

- U.S. National Archives, Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons, NAID 5743289, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. FRAME records the rights as public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/berryman-easter-bunny-kennedy-spending-1961/